ING Hartford Half Marathon race report

Ok this year I had wanted to do the Hartford Marathon. A last minute entry into the Chesapeakeman Skipjack led to a lack of marathon run training going into early October.  After some conversations with my girlfriend and assessing my training; the full pull just wasn't in the cards this time around. I crushed out the mileage to do a half marathon and then some so I decided to "half ass Hartford." Part of me still felt like I was wimping out doing the shorter option especially when I went to the expo with my sibs to pick up my bib and goodie bag, but I figured if I was going to do the half then I was going to throttle it.

My PR at the distance was a 1:34 split in the 2009 Hartford Full Marathon , since then the best I was able to muster was a 1:38 at Savin Rock in 2010, I figured with the way I had been running in my half ironmans this year and with my Macca-esque chase down of Josie in the Chesapeakeman race ( where I made up 9:50 or a 10:00min deficit on the bike during a 10 mile run.) I was hoping for a sub 1:35 day, maybe even sub 1:30.

Race morning came early and it was cold. Steph and I drove into Hartford and when we made it to the Aetna garage the temperature was a balmy 30F. All week some of my friends racing with me from the Y tri club asked me what cold weather gear I would be racing in. When I responded a singlet and gloves I got the typical response of "you're nuts." I had a long sleeve tee in my bag but I had raced in colder without one so  I left Steph to unsuccessfully find a portolet. I did get a mini warm up in and figured I'd be fine. So I ditched my wind pants and long sleeves with the World's cutest gear sherpa, and made my way to the start.

As we queued up I looked for the 1:30 pace group and saw it was on the other side of the Orange netting separating the seeded runners from us Barbarians. In my haste to register I forgot to mention my race time and get a seed card. (For the half athletes looking to run sub 1:45 are placed with the elites where in the Marathon only runners who can break 3 hours are seeded.) Luckily I was right behind the divider and when the volunteers moved out of the way and took the fencing with them I was able to find the 1:35 pace group and got in front of it. About this time a guy named Pat in a black sweat shirt and tights came along side. "How fast you looking to run?" he asked  "1:30" replied, "Good I'll pace with you." We started developing our plan of attack as reps from ING, the State Police and Hartford Chamber of Commerce talked themselves up on the PA system.We were then joined by an elite looking chick with a nose ring and lime green shorts, I didn't catch her name but she joined the "unofficial 1:30 Pace squad." Essentially if the three of us could stay together we would go under 1:30.

The gun went off and the carnage began. The Half and full start together so the beginning of the race is mass pandemonium. runners with different paces and goals clogging the streets. Pat, green chick and myself darted through the crowd. I tried desperately to keep with them occasionally I was able to surge ahead. We hit the split mark about mile 2 and the marathon runners broke off and there was a lot more room to maneuver. I looked at Pat when we went through the first aid station. "I think we cooked that first mile." He nodded but was keeping the pace. As we made our way toward West Hartford he and green chick were history and I was left on my own. In my head part of me was like "well looks like I'm going to be running another 1:40ish half." I looked at the split at 3 miles 19:55 I decided to try to find a runner up the road and keep them in sight. The only one that had been consistently in front of me was a chick in a bright purple Block Island Sports jersey. So she became my first pacer. By mile 4 I looked at my watch and I was still going sub 7 so maybe 1:30 was still possible. I tried to focus on the fading runners to find targets I could catch and pass. I ran through one cheering section completely oblivious to anyone but the guy/girl I was trying to reel in. Mile 5 was slightly above 7 so I need to pick it up for mile 6. We went through the ING fan zone in this mile and as tacky as it sounds it actually was motivating. Having the screams of 100 plus fans can definitely get you to light the fire under your ass. I went through mile 6 in 6:44  then mile 7 in 6:47, I was starting to get passed by droves of runners but as I checked my splits it was because they were speeding up instead of me slowing down. Mile 8 was a little slower a 7:02 but it went slightly uphill and when we turned into Elizabeth park for miles 9 I managed to bring the pace back down as it was down hill but at mile 10 I was back above 7 minutes. I decided to push because I saw I went through mile 10 in 1:08, if I could hold 7 min miles 1:29 was do able. Mile 11 was our last in West Hartford as we made the turn onto Farmington Ave. I had tried to keep pace with Roger from HEAT ( Josie and I had raced with him at Chesapeakeman.) and it helped as I had gone 6:45 but now my quads and hamstrings were beginning to scream. In my head I kept saying to myself  "must go faster."  There were no mile markers so I didn't know how close I was coming to the finish. We ran past gas stations, the cathedral,  various shops, and more guys saying "you're almost there" than I care to count but it wasn't until he hit the train station that I knew we were almost there. I saw the the barriers and the mums in the dividers start, I saw the arch and I looked at the watch it was just hitting 1:29:30. I pushed and hit the line just after it crossed 1:30. No crazy arms in the air, or fist pump to celebrate, just a click of the watch and a well deserved PR official time was 1:30:28.... about 4 minutes faster than my 09 marathon split and 7 minutes faster than my best straight half.

I grabbed some water from the massive fountain and my foil blanket from the volunteers and made my way toward the far end of the finish chute. I saw Steph and we met up. She handed me my long sleeve T shirt and turned my foil blanket into a kilt. Doug from the Waterbury Y tri club came over, he had gone a little slower than expected but a 1:35 was still a PR for him. Alexei came in a few minutes later pulling a 1:38 on a sore knee in his first half. All in all it was a good day.  Now I have a few short road races coming up and 2013 to plan.

R.D.

That light in the distance ain't the sun.. it's the A train.

That's how I've been feeling the last few weeks. Rev3 is about 6 weeks and counting away and I've only done one 50+  mile ride.
running is coming along steadily and I've really felt motivated in the tempo runs I've done over the past few weeks. I've consistently been putting in 20 mile weeks, so while I'm not in Ironman or Marathon Shape yet  a sub 1:50 half marathon split is definitely going to happen and if I have energy after the bike I might be able to break the 1:40 barrier again.
The swim is, as always, my strength. I've been putting 10k yards a week for the last month so I know I'll be in good shape out of the water.

The last two weeks have shed new light on why I have had a love hate relationship with the bike. Two weeks ago on went on a training ride with Alexei , Rinaldi and Neil. I was doing fine on flats and down hills. When we started the climbs my lower back would start flaring up as soon as we hit the inclines, and I was dropped like a bad habit. I had tweaked my bike seat during the winter so I wouldn't be so squashed on my aerobars.

But after hearing comments like , "Dude it looks like you're planking." and losing 5-10 minutes to the group on every climb. Apparently it backfired quite literally.  My back was doing all the work while climbing causing my relatively short rides to be painful ordeals. The thing is even before the tweak my back's always acted up on rides. I've heard the

 Last week after taking some of Rinaldi's comments into account, I moved my seat radically forward and pulled my aerobars back to try to find a more powerful climbing position. Well while my back was taking less stress, my bike handling went the way of the dodo. The Stomper felt like skittish when I hit the brakes and did not want to corner.  So I put my seat back a little bit further almost to the point where it was before I did my original adjustment and I have the areobars back but not to the extreme last week. I'm hoping that I can find the happy medium between bike handling and climbing power.

A friend has offered to take me for a bike fit, while I hate having to get help from others just because I hate feeling indebted to people likewise it will be at least two weeks before I can schedule any time to get it done. But if it can help me unlock my potential and get me to like riding again I'm all for it because I'm starting to get sick of my reputation of leading the swim, getting dropped on the bike, and despite valiant runs being too far back to be a factor.  But for right now I've got to keep making temporary fixes hoping I can stop the bleeding, and get myself into a powerful yet comfortable position before I can see the experts. So that's where I stand right now. I need to bike more but I need to bike comfortably so my other sports won't suffer and I can bike more consistently without having to take 1-3 days to unlock my back.


So here's to hopefully better rides
R.D.

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The Season's taking shape

Well Tuesday night was the Greater Waterbury YMCA Tri Club kick off meeting. Among other events going on that night was a raffle for free entries into the Rev3 Quassy Half and Olympic, The Pat Griskus Sprint and Olympic and the Hopkins Inn Triathlon at Lake Waramaug ( essentially the revival of the Lake Waramaug Tri on the original route.)

Let's cut to the chase my luck at raffles still sucks and I came up empty handed granted I really could have used that entry into Rev3. I was able to register for the Griskus and Waramaug Sprints with a one night only discount. So my season looks like this so far:

June 16 Patriot Half East Freetown, MA

July 11 26th annual Pat Griskus Sprint Middlebury, CT

July 21 1st Annual Hopkins Inn Tri Washington, CT

My hope is to register for Rev3 Half Quassy before entry fills up so hopefully that will be part of next week's pay well spent. As mentioned earlier all New England race directors decided to front stack all of their Olympic distance races before Age group Nationals in Vermont. So I'm not sure if I'll be doing an Oly this year. I've thought about Rev3 Old Orchard Beach but if I'm going that far North I'd rather race a half. If Quassy fills up then I'll definitely do Old Orchard as I want to do at least two halves this season, and if I have the cash and play my cards right, a full iron distance race to finish off the season.

Next year I'm hoping to either go back to Louisville or another WTC sanctioned event to try to punch my ticket to the big dance, but this year is going to be trying to rebuild to the level I used to be at. When I was hungry, when I could eat lightning and crap thunder, when my goal was clear, Big Island, Pro Card, Big Results. While the pro card maybe a stretch ( more of like a stretch, long bike ride and a plethora of performance enhancing drugs...I mean natural and legal supplements.) I'm hoping for some big results to get me moving in the right direction.

Training's been pretty consistent, the run miles are still a little low but I'll be putting up some big numbers in the next few weeks. But so far I have three races. They are pretty fast courses with pretty stacked fields so the training needs to stay consistent and my attitude needs to get back into that "I can do it because I'm hot fire. And I'll school your ass like Macca" mode instead of the "I'm a whiny coward trying to survive." mode. That's going to be the hard part.

R.D.

Welcome back to the freezer

Well today I decided to put tires to pavement. The temps were near 50F and Steph had left early for play practice so I had the afternoon to myself. Since the weather was nice and I had noting better to do I unhooked the Stomper from the trainer and went out to Middlebury. I hadn't ridden outdoors in Winter since 2009 so I dugout my tattered pair of wool socks and threw another pair of cycling socks over the top hoping that they would keep my feet warm as the only cycling shoes that had decent cleats were my tri shoes. I kept the route simple and did two loops of the Griskus Sprint bike loop. I took the first loop pretty tentatively as I focused on bike handling. It wasn't too windy and once I knew where the sand and pot holes were I was able to open it up. The S-curve at mile 3 and the turn on to Tomilson Rd at mile 4 looked like someone had dumped sandbags down, but there was still enough of a path that to fit the bike safely through. The fact there was very little traffic also helped. I did have an issue with the censor on my bike computer shaking loose on the second loop after hitting a pothole, so a mile and a half of the ride wasn't recorded. I was surprised I didn't bump into more riders but there were several runners. I finished the 20.50 ride in a little under an hour and a half averaging about 15mph. Not fast by any means but not bad for my first outdoor ride since August.

I got back to the car and threw on my Newtons and went for a 5k run down the Griskus Sprint Run course. I kept the pace moderate and I could feel that my feet are adjusting to the Newtons. I'm not ready to tackle any 10 milers yet but I have a feeling if I'm able to get through the next two weeks doing short runs between 3-6 miles I'll be able to get back into the high mile high speed runs. This week I've got some tough workouts on tap in the pool and on the trainer

RD

First run in Newtons and other training tales

Well yesterday I took my Newton's out for their first run. It went pretty well but until I fully "break in" the shoes I'm going to have to keep the miles low. I could really feel the lugs when I was going downhill, but not so much on the flats or going up hill. It also allowed me some time to reflect on my stride. My left foot seems to already land on my midfoot, where on my right foot I could still feel the lugs and it tends to pronate a little more. I know that as I get used to the shoes and my mileage increases, my stride will improve and I'm confident that my run splits will get faster this year.

I've also started getting back on the spin bike. My bike leg is what needs the most improvement and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get my cycling back to the level it was at in 2008 and 2009. The set that has been the most use to be has been 4x5:00 in big cog on the front with my 15 tooth cog on the back, working on getting my cadence up and building my endurance.

My swimming is back up to about 4000 per practice and the triathletes I'm coaching are improving and building up the yardage . that's more info for another post but so far I'm thinking that 2012 will be a good year.

R.D.

Back to the Pat...

Well I've signed up for the 2012 Patriot Half Iron in Freetown, MA on June 16. This will be the first time I've competed there since 2009, which was probably one of the best years for me competitively. While I was going through it 09 seemed to be an off year but looking at it in hindsight, it was the last year I sort of had some stability in training, work schedule, and life in general. Now things have started to calm down again, and while last year was a little over ambitious and I am trying to focus on getting myself back into hard core competition, and every year that I've done the Patriot good things have usually followed.
This year will be different than when I enter the Pat in 08 and 09. In those years buoyed by strong results in the previous year's tris I went into the Elite/ Open division to try to compete for a check...and promptly got smoked on the bike. 2008 actually went well I carried the #1 bib and set the day's fastest swim split. In 2009 I had a gearing miscue on the bike so I sort of fell out of contention pretty early indeed Speedy Claire was able to cross beating Bobby off her bucket list ( although I asterisk this as she was only doing the aquabike and didn't have to hold me off on the run.) granted I did throw down a pretty nasty run split, which would have put me higher up overall if I threw down my typical 2:45 bike split instead of a 3:00. This year I entered as an age grouper only because the competition has gotten exponentially harder, Karim from the Waterbury Y tri club won the 25-29 AG last year throwing down a 4:35 the best I did here was 4:55 with a short swim and speedy run in 2009. So my goal is to go under 4:45 and hopefully show myself as a serious competitor instead of a survivor like I was last year at Providence and Louisville.So the game plan for Patriot this year is to work the bike and the run. I'll still swim 3x a week but since I know I'll be able to do a sub 30 swim split pretty easily I won't have to throw doen the 5200yard death workouts I did for Ironman. 3000-4000 yards per workout should be plenty, granted they should be a quality 3-4k. My running is coming along and I'm hoping the Newtons will add some ammo to the tool kit. The bike is where I need to put my work but it's hard. Most coaches state that you need to do at least 100 miles a week to show improvement and at last check I still have a 9-5er, rent to pay, a relationship to maintain, so going out for 3x50 milers a week maybe out of the cards especially if i want to keep a job, keep the girlfriend and keep a roof over my head. So I may have to resort to the trainer and Good ol' coach Troy and Chris Carmichael shouting at me to get out of the saddle and try to unleash my inner Lance. So 2012 is starting to shape up after the Waterbury Y tri club kickoff and raffle on Feb 21 I'll have a better idea of what my season will look like.

RD